Dear Editor,
The battles goes on, the fingers pointing in all directions in relation to who is to be blamed for the present crisis that the rice industry find itself in because of the lack of irrigation water. I happened to meet Mr Charles Sohan at the Mainstay holiday resort some years ago while he was visiting. We had a long discussion on the Tapakuma scheme, and it was only then I learnt that he was one of the engineers who worked on the scheme and had a good knowledge of the way the irrigation systems were designed to irrigate the farmers’ fields.
I myself who worked with the Drainage and Irrigation department and used to visit the Dawa pumping station knew about the operation in prolonged dry weather and the effects of El Niño on the rice industry. The Tapakuma project was designed to allow a gravity flow of water into the high lands first which are situated from Reliance to Coffee Grove so the level is maintained in the conservancy canal. The three door sluice at MCR will be locked down to facilitate the raising of the water level; every section has an irrigation regulator on the main canal embankment.
The sections will be irrigated on a turn system so the level can be maintained in the conservancy. After the sections are irrigated as far as Dartmouth, the MCR sluice doors will be raised to send water into the downstream rice lands, which have the lower lands and can get gravity feed without much difficulty. What usually happens is that there is an abundance of water left in the main conservancy canal after the crop is harvested, but no one will monitor or close the MCR doors, Red Lock’s three doors and the embankment regulators. This happens year round and the water is wasted for two to three months flowing out into the Atlantic. If this water were saved after harvesting, farmers would have enough water to cultivate for the start of their crops.
In my time working with the overseers of Drainage and Irrigation, we would travel from Anna Regina to Red Lock in a tractor and trailer, board a speedboat and check each water gauge while going through the lakes and savanna and record it in our log book until we reached the Dawa pumping station. We would then check on the pump to see it is in working condition and the station has been properly cleaned with no oil spillage on the engines or the floor.
These days officers do not travel by boat to check on the water gauges, they travel by a 4×4 vehicle to Dawa so they cannot see the water level in the lakes and savanna to report the right thing to their superior officers.
Many times the officers and rangers mislead the Chairman and Vice Chairman at meetings about the condition of the drainage and irrigation systems. I quite agree with Mr Edward Gonsalves’ letter which was published in on January 23 in Stabroek News captioned ‘NDIA and RDC officials were warned months ago this El Niño would be strong’. Many of the people who are placed in positions know nothing about efficient water management. It should be noted that in order to achieve the best results, sweet water should have been pumped from the Pomeroon River when the water was high for the spring crop, that is in November to December, but the Drainage and Irrigation Department failed to do this.
In 1998, the El Niño effect was worse than this long dry spell. I doubt whether new officers are aware that there is a canal and a regulator there which were built after the El Niño hit the farmers hard in this area and they lost their entire cash and rice crops. During my tenure with the RPA as a rice extension officer, a mobile pump was placed in the Manacuri area after we found water in the savanna, and that helped to build the water level in the downstream canal.
Minister of Agriculture Noel Holder recently announced some emergency measures which were put in place to alleviate the irrigation problem.
Yours faithfully,
Mohamed Khan
